


A Sort of Visionary Mist

by ERNest



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Death, Gen, Ghosts, The Sublime, Waterloo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-28
Updated: 2018-10-28
Packaged: 2019-08-08 15:43:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16432283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ERNest/pseuds/ERNest
Summary: A ghost walks what remains of Waterloo.





	A Sort of Visionary Mist

     A ghost walks what remains of Waterloo. There are many ghosts here. Nearly sixty thousand dead taken all together, and even if most of those brave souls ventured from this shadowy realm to one of Light, quite a few must have stayed behind as specters. The writer of this tale does not pretend to understand mathematics, but can certainly recognize the Sublime.

     The moans of not-yet-dead corpses dumped into the well all merged into a single voice, whose echo can still be heard on nights when the angle of moonlight is just right, and the same can be said of the sunken road turned living grave. The wounded trees carry in their rustling leaves the stories of what they have witnessed, and the young boy who spurred his company on to greatness still plays the bagpipes with the wind from his immaterial lungs.

     Every skeleton is Wellington; every skeleton is Napoleon. Beneath the mound that desecrates history to glorify it, the corpse of the eighteenth century lurks, and rots, and fails to find peace in its own memories.

     The phantom we speak of here is none of these and all of them. It is neither more nor less than the lingering spirit of the battle itself, which moves with chaos in its brush. Genius lost to calculus and the future lost to the past, which then circles back around to become the present. In the course of a day, Light and Dark switched places, and it took time for the ripples of that moment to extend to all of Europe. This great drama is repeated with each dusk and dawn, and the survivors and descendants of survivors go about their lives, telling the stories that cast these shadows of the past and keep them alive into the future.


End file.
